How you feel about Kim Clijsters doing a split in a frilly orange skirt probably depends on your reaction to a well-oiled Caroline Wozniacki serving a tennis ball into a wind machine. Then again, these provocative scenarios, which form part of the Women's Tennis Association's new "Strong is Beautiful" advertising campaign, seem tame compared to the spot starring Belarusian tennis ace Victoria Azarenka. "I like to hit the ball hard. Crush it," the 2011 Wimbledon semi-finalist says ...

Something in all living things responds mysteriously to the sound of wind in the reeds. At the gentle pleasing of a flute, certain crabs glide out of their caves and sit listening under water. Mosquitoes of some breeds collect on people playing flutes. Lions fly into panic, dogs sink into bliss—though only when the flute is played in the key of C minor. In China, the musk deer is hunted with a Judas flute, which the deer meekly follows to its doom.People respond to the flute ...

If you want to know why Denmark is the world's leader in wind power, start with a three-hour car trip from the capital Copenhagen — mind the bicyclists — to the small town of Lem on the far west coast of Jutland. You'll feel it as you cross the 4.2 mile-long Great Belt Bridge: Denmark's bountiful wind, so fierce even on a calm summer's day that it threatens to shove your car into the waves below. But wind itself ...

My copy of Margaret Mitchell's Gone with the Wind — a 114th printing, now a bit tattered — carries an inscription from my mother: "A good book is timeless." Mitchell's novel, whose 75th anniversary has arrived amid many reconsiderations and even more sales, may or may not be a good book. But it has always been a popular one. Published in the summer of 1936 at the startling Depression price of $3 — the equivalent of nearly $50 today — ...

A chill wind is blowing through Mitte, the once drab district in central Berlin that is fast becoming hangout central for the world's creative types. Davide Grazioli, used to warmer climes, pulls his black woolly hat over his head and strides up Kastanien Allee — now dubbed Casting Alley because of all the wannabe film directors and actors who frequent its cafs. Grazioli is an Italian artist whose work includes unraveled embroideries from India and skulls made of organic ...